Colfax-Mingo opens new facility in time for first varsity event

Working on the weekends can be a drag. But Colfax-Mingo Superintendent Tim Salmon welcomed it with open arms on Saturday.

He didn’t want to miss the excitement of the school finally opening up its latest first-class athletic facility.

“This has been a long time coming. The community, the kids and everybody is just excited to open it up,” Salmon said. “There’s a lot of relief. It’s Saturday morning, and I was excited to go to work today. I don’t always say that.”

The new facility is an addition built onto the existing Colfax-Mingo Jr./Sr. High School.

It includes a brand new competition gym, walking track, wrestling room, batting cages, fitness center and weight room as well as a merchandise room to purchase all of your Tigerhawk gear for the upcoming school year.

“It was a long time coming. The kids deserve it. The community deserves it,” Colfax-Mingo Activities Director Erin Hume said. “We’ve put in a lot of work to get this done. Between the custodians, the school, staff members, the booster club and everyone else who was involved. Everybody came together to make sure this happened today. It was awesome.”

What happened on Saturday, Aug. 26, was the first official athletic event. Colfax-Mingo hosted its annual volleyball tournament in the brand-new facility.

The Tigerhawks played an all-day tournament with three other schools and Colfax-Mingo came away with its third straight championship.

“We’re really excited. If you told me we’d have something like this when I was playing, I would have laughed and told you you were crazy,” said new Colfax-Mingo boys head basketball coach Mike Hunsberger, an alum who graduated in 1999. “To look around and see what’s happening, these are some of the best facilities in the state. I have been to a lot of them. I don’t think the kids fully know how blessed they are to have this.”

Hume serves as the school’s activities director but also is the head girls’ wrestling coach.

Having the new facility just makes things easier for everyone.

“It’s not just for teams that will be using the gym for competition,” Hume said. “We are not talking about just volleyball, basketball and wrestling. The facility helps everyone.

“Baseball and softball players can use the batting cages, the indoor track can help with cross country and track athletes and the new weight room will make all of us better.”

It’s been two years since the wrestling teams have had a true wrestling room because of the construction.

A parking lot now sits where the old wrestling room and football field existed.

But now, the facility has a wrestling room that is twice as large as the previous one.

“We can roll out three mats in the new gym and two mats in the old gym if we want to,” Hume said. “We can have a warm-up area now. Things are going to be a lot easier.”

The community eventually will be permitted to use the track and cardio equipment with the purchase of an access card.

“The community can purchase an access card for a very minimal fee that will give them access to the track and workout room,” Salmon said. “They won’t have access to the gym.”

Grant did not know a few weeks ago if her team would be able to host the volleyball tournament inside the new facility. Her squad only got one practice on their new floor before the tournament.

Salmon says the facility is about 95 percent complete, but community members and athletes may not even notice the things that remain on the checklist.

“There are a lot of small things to finish up,” Salmon said. “A week ago, this place was full of construction. We just got the elevator approved two days ago. We’ve been doing a lot of last-minute things. We set a deadline to make for this event and we got here.

“Two days ago, we didn’t have holes in the floor for the volleyball nets. That’s how close we were. The rest of it will take some time, but it also will be things the general public probably won’t even notice. Our goal is to open this thing up completely on October 1. That’s our target date.”

The competition floor is much larger and has a lot more space around it. The previous varsity competition floor was nearly connected to the doors that go into the gym.

And it wasn’t uncommon for fans to walk on the edge of the court during basketball games.

“It was fun talking last night about how much room we would have in here,” Grant said. “We shanked a ball last night in practice and we just told them to go get it because there’s plenty of space. You aren’t going to run into the wall before it’s unplayable so just go.”